Scientific Collections Building / Mary Harmon Bryant Hall

Mary Harmon Bryant Hall

Quick Info

Building # 1038 | Abbreviation: SCF
Scientific Collections

  • Biodiversity and Systematics
  • Energy and Mineral Information- Geological Core Repository
  • Natural History Collections

University Libraries

  • The William Stanley Hoole Special Collection Library

Hoole Library

Built 1997 and originally known as the Special Collections Building, Mary Harmon Bryant Hall is the storage, teaching, and research center for most of UA's scientific collections. The W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library is also located on the second floor of the building and contains research materials documenting the unique historical and cultural experiences of The University of Alabama and its people.

In 2001, the building was renamed to honor Mary Harmon Bryant, wife of legendary Crimson Tide football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.

The first floor of the building holds the Alabama State Oil and Gas Board/Geological Survey of Alabama's rock samples and drilling cores. On the second floor, in the lobby of Hoole, stands the historic Tiffany stain-glass window which was dedicated to the cadets that fought to defend the university in the Civil War. The window was originally placed in the first Gorgas library, now Carmichael Hall, in 1925 before being moved to the current Gorgas Library and then finally resting in Mary Harmon Bryant Hall.

On the third floor, the Alabama Museum of Natural History conserves a broad array of collections including paleontology, mammalogy, history, ethnology, ornithology, osteology, mineralogy, entomology, and photography. The herbarium and the ichthyological, herpetological, and mollusk collections of the UA department of biological sciences are located on the fourth floor. A 4500-item collection of historic costumes and textiles is also housed in Mary Harmon Bryant Hall.

Images

Information collected from The University of Alabama : a guide to the campus by Robert Oliver Mellown (Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c1988), and The University of Alabama, a pictorial history by Suzanne Rau Wolfe (University : University of Alabama Press, c1983).